Guild Vote, 2023

Sturmfaenger

Why just those? Who not OUR GUILDS?
I would like some "real" guild dailies^^ For guild groups, and not just raids or pvp, but a mix. And for rewards I'd like for example banners with the guilds symbols for the houses or such.

robwolf666

The option I would choose isn't there. All of them. It would be odd to me to update just one of them and leave the rest as they are, especially the Mage/Fighter Guilds.

ghastley

Psijics?

starlizard70ub17_ESO

Fighter’s Guild

I picked fighters guild because it seems the worst, but all of the guilds need updating. The guild dailies really need better rewards to even bother with them. The Thieves and DB story lines I only go as far I need to get shadow rider passive and a few TG levels. Undaunted pledges I only do during events now.

The_Titan_Tim

Dark Brotherhood

starlizard70ub17_ESO wrote: »

I picked fighters guild because it seems the worst, but all of the guilds need updating. The guild dailies really need better rewards to even bother with them. The Thieves and DB story lines I only go as far I need to get shadow rider passive and a few TG levels. Undaunted pledges I only do during events now.

Shadow Rider is such a useful passive, I just did the Thieves Guild again yesterday for Veil of Shadows on my Necromancer, and let me tell you, that 10% is huge.

The_Titan_Tim

Dark Brotherhood

ghastley wrote: »

Psijics?

As Psijic was the last addition to our guilds and therefore the newest, I left it out, not to mention as far as skill lines, Psijic is in the best place compared to all of them.

Psijic is also considered a “non-tradition” guild to a lot of people, as it’s not one of the four commonly found in prior games, not to say it doesn’t need work, other guilds have just been in a horrible place, longer.

Mesite

Mage’s Guild

People tell me how good the thieves guild story is but I can't get through it. The mages guild is a bit patchy. Go into dangerous dungeons and collect books. Not much fun when you first start in my opinion.

LadyLavina

Amerises wrote: »

I don’t see the value in doing thieves guild. I’ve been playing for several years and can’t bring myself to do it, as it just seems like a waste of time. Is it just about achievements or is the story really good?

I did the entire questline approximately once and have not again as it is a bit of a slog to get through. Not boring, definitely well written and probably compelling/engaging to the right person, just not me.

Dr_Con

Jarl_Ironheart wrote: »

Why are most people picking thieves guild? What is there to do with them except steal more stuff?

The only thing the thieves guild needs is some casino heist DLC/Dungeon with a triple backstab and multiple paths to completion depending on the choices the group makes and alarms they trigger. Theives' guild is a daily i regularly do, whereas I don't touch DB, and I only do Mage's Guild and Fighter's Guild for companion levels and rapport.

derkaiserliche

Dark Brotherhood

Would love if every guild has a passive like the undaunted ones, so you really benefit from doing them.

Hopefully there will be a guild close to the companion one in skyrim one day again

The_Titan_Tim

Dark Brotherhood

derkaiserliche wrote: »

Would love if every guild has a passive like the undaunted ones, so you really benefit from doing them.

Hopefully there will be a guild close to the companion one in skyrim one day again

They have the Companions in The Rift and could have easily added them as a skill line when they released Greymoor but for some reason decided against a new skill line.

fall0athboy

Amerises wrote: »

I don’t see the value in doing thieves guild. I’ve been playing for several years and can’t bring myself to do it, as it just seems like a waste of time. Is it just about achievements or is the story really good?

Story is pretty decent, IMO, but levelling it is such a pain.

The_Titan_Tim

Dark Brotherhood

Dr_Con wrote: »

Jarl_Ironheart wrote: »

Why are most people picking thieves guild? What is there to do with them except steal more stuff?

The only thing the thieves guild needs is some casino heist DLC/Dungeon with a triple backstab and multiple paths to completion depending on the choices the group makes and alarms they trigger. Theives' guild is a daily i regularly do, whereas I don't touch DB, and I only do Mage's Guild and Fighter's Guild for companion levels and rapport.

Thieves Guild could definitely use a return with some additional content, and most importantly I would love to see an active skill line for it based around stealth.

cyclonus11

Thieves Guild

The_Titan_Tim wrote: »

Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood desperately need an active skill line, and all four guilds need a systems rework with new rewards and ranking systems akin to prior games, although all of this would be unlikely in one year, if you had to choose any of the four guilds to get some much needed love next year, which guild would you choose? I’m throwing my hat in for the Brotherhood.

They didn't add active skills to those two guilds because they didn't want them to seem like "pay to win", since both were released via DLCs. But it's been long enough where they can just include these two zones with each chapter launch / base game purchase and it wouldn't be that big of a deal; then they could expand upon the skill lines.

The_Titan_Tim

Dark Brotherhood

fall0athboy wrote: »

Amerises wrote: »

I don’t see the value in doing thieves guild. I’ve been playing for several years and can’t bring myself to do it, as it just seems like a waste of time. Is it just about achievements or is the story really good?

Story is pretty decent, IMO, but levelling it is such a pain.

Thieves Guild was a nightmare to level, along with Dark Brotherhood. Have to say, not a highlight,

Turtle_Bot

Mage’s Guild

Honestly an update to the mages guild line is needed at this point. The shift from max stats to raw damage hurt the line a lot and hybridization hasn't helped it when most of its abilities and passives are underwhelming at best (except meteor which is still ok) when compared to the fighters guild abilities and passives which are just straight up stronger and provide better utility.

karthrag_inak

ProudMary wrote: »

I think the Psijic guild skill line is most in need of attention. The grind to get through this skill line is HORRIBLE. It should be made easier IMO.

Perhaps not made easier, but this guild should definitely be made much more interesting.

Khajiit does not find "Go to obscure waypoint and strain out gas whilst listening to snarky skull rant about 'hur hur meatbag hur hur hilARious' repeatedly ad nauseum" to be worthwhile content.

karthrag_inak

There should be guilds for every profession (sorcerors, necromancers, etc), with interesting story quest lines and some kind of prof-based minor extension of skills or passives.
Crafting-based guilds for blacksmiths and clothiers and the like too.

The_Titan_Tim

Dark Brotherhood

karthrag_inak wrote: »

There should be guilds for every profession (sorcerors, necromancers, etc), with interesting story quest lines and some kind of prof-based minor extension of skills or passives.
Crafting-based guilds for blacksmiths and clothiers and the like too.

I agree, and would love to see a craft guild in-game. Although I have to say, I really do believe that they need to work on the four core guilds of TES before worrying about any other in-game guilds.

LikiLoki

Player guilds - that's the option we need. Not a box for 500 people, but a full-fledged guild for players with lore, daily tasks, branches and a plot that will be passed by those who join the guild for the first time (optional)

fleetingyouth_ESO

Dark Brotherhood

The_Titan_Tim wrote: »

fall0athboy wrote: »

Amerises wrote: »

I don’t see the value in doing thieves guild. I’ve been playing for several years and can’t bring myself to do it, as it just seems like a waste of time. Is it just about achievements or is the story really good?

Story is pretty decent, IMO, but levelling it is such a pain.

Thieves Guild was a nightmare to level, along with Dark Brotherhood. Have to say, not a highlight,

Both can be leveled in half a day pretty easily by just doing the right quest over and over again. Even just doing it for 20mins each time you log in would probably only take a couple of weeks. There is even an add-on for both guilds to make it faster if you are an add-on user.

Far easier than the mages, fighters and pysjic guilds.

Supreme_Atromancer

Mage’s Guild

I have some strong opinions on this.

I chose Mages Guild because it is my favourite, but I honestly think all the guilds could use some work, and need some love.

Firstly, I want to say that we've got all these fire-and-forget, DISPOSABLE LORE organisations all over Tamriel now that we go in, work for, and then never have anything to do with ever again.

No one CARES about the OFFICE OF SAVAGE GLEANERS because we'll get some inconsequential "huh" tidbit about who they are and then that's IT. Its Contiki Tamriel.

Yet we have the Fighters, Mages, Thieves, Brotherhood all with 20 years of work and story that are left to languish.

I, too, actually *chose to be* part of the Mages Guild, because I want that to reflect who my character is, and what they believe. As it stands, it really means nothing. I would LOVE if our choice of guild MEANT something.

I actually really LIKE the tone of the Mages Guild dailies. There's still too much CHEESE!!, but the quests are low-key, interesting, not too silly, and feel like the sort of quests I might have been doing for the Mages Guild in Daggerfall, Morrowind or Oblivion and I really cherish that.

As others have pointed out, though;

The repertoire of possible locations needs to be GREATLY expanded. Seriously, one of the biggest highlights of the post-launch zones is the absolutely amazing, hand-crafted delves and public dungeons. We now have dozens of them, and they're all absolutely enjoyable to explore (if you're not on the grind, in which case it might be frustrating). Its such a shame if I've paid money to buy all these gorgeous zones that my dailies should be locked to the 4 or 5 base game zone possibilities.

AND, the reward structure needs to be GREATLY improved, to incentivise and revitalise them.

Supreme_Atromancer

Mage’s Guild

Regarding the Fighters Guild, I agree strongly with what some other people have pointed out in this thread- UNFORTUNATELY, they really have no character.

Sadly, IMV, their niche has been supplanted by the Undaunted, who are essentially doing what the Fighters Guild was doing in the previous games. Its a puzzling design choice, IMV, and sadly leaves the Fighters Guild redundant.

If it were up to me, I'd merge the concepts of the FG and Undaunted, but maybe that ship sailed many years ago, so who knows.

I very much agree that they really need love.

Supreme_Atromancer

Mage’s Guild

Regarding the FG and DB I just want to repeat what I've said elsewhere, that the Heists and Sacraments are actually REALLY fun gameplay that's sadly really overlooked.

I overlooked it for a long time. Probably for a few reasons: you can only do one a day. The rewards are lacklustre, or at least dated FAR beyond any relevance. AND they're tucked away in a forgotten part of the world you're just not reminded of.

I honestly think that they weren't sold with the conviction that they deserve. Consider dungeons, which are pushed as this core gameplay experience with the core systems like combat and gear tying tightly to them. And their reward structures, which are still relevant today. Each one is expertly crafted, with effort going into these enigmatic stories, voice acting, mechanics and stunning visuals. Even the most jaded of us must admit that the Dungeoncrafting work is seriously one of the absolute best qualities of the game, and the team continually knock that out of the park, imv.

Compare with the Heists and Sacraments, which truly involve fun and engaging mechanics, and have obviously been handcrafted with love- but the locations are all steadfastly generic, story is deliberately basic, the rewards were only peripheral at best.

So my question is, could these be expanded on? Could they be more than they are? And if they were, would more people engage them? Could these stand along dungeons and exploration as core experience?

Or, perhaps that's too much. Perhaps all it needs is to be re-incentivized, and new generic locations developed so that people can keep engaging them much as they are now?

Supreme_Atromancer

Mage’s Guild

But great thread idea, btw.

I just wanted to say one last thing - that one of the reasons that I'm excited about the tone of Matt's recent letter, is because it opens the possibility that these are the sorts of things that ZOS, themselves are thinking.

Honestly, if the devs are hoping to capitalise on the literal YEARS of content that they've created, and add value to those gorgeous lands that they've put so much hard work into creating so that we actually have reasons to go back to them after we've ripped them apart for all the antiquities, achieves, and moved on, I think its one of the best ideas they've had in a long time, and I'm 100% on board.

I also think that the classic guilds, which, as pointed out, really speak to the soul of the franchise, could be a fantastic vehicle for driving the replayability of all the existing zones.

If its handled right.

Amottica

The_Titan_Tim wrote: »

Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood desperately need an active skill line,

They do not desperately need an active skill line. They serve the purposes they are intended to serve very well and thematically fit well with their respective DLC stories. We have no desperate need for more skills as we have a ton. That is not to say Zenimax should not add more skills but it needs to be where it makes sense.

fizzylu

Dark Brotherhood

Amottica wrote: »

The_Titan_Tim wrote: »

Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood desperately need an active skill line,

They do not desperately need an active skill line. They serve the purposes they are intended to serve very well and thematically fit well with their respective DLC stories. We have no desperate need for more skills as we have a ton. That is not to say Zenimax should not add more skills but it needs to be where it makes sense.

I've been wanting them to add active skills to those lines for years so agree to disagree and it does make sense for them to have them too.

The_Titan_Tim

Dark Brotherhood

Thanks @Supreme_Atromancer for all the input, I’m glad you find the thread in great taste. I feel very strongly about the core guilds and would love to see them develop stronger identities.

It’s been very interesting viewing the results so far, they are all pretty well split, with only Fighter’s Guild falling behind, and I think you might be onto something with Undaunted hijacking their identity. Dungeons as a whole feel very Fighter’s Guild.

Supreme_Atromancer

Mage’s Guild

OK I lied, I'm gonna post again- what can I say, loadscreens between writs are boring!

Thinking about Mages Guild dailies a bit: they could reflect the experience of the "Mage" power fantasy and perceived playstyle, something the TG and DB already do really well imv. Its harder to answer this in terms of gameplay- what a "mage does" is already consumed in pretty much "high deeps combat" in this game. I don't know, its sadly reductionist. Could it be different?

In terms of theme, though- I think that there's TONS of really cool stuff they could do!

I'd honestly want to start with what the Mages Guild is meant to be: for me, since going back to play Arena and Daggerfall, I got the sense there was always this kind of grey, pulp-fantasy feel of magic being a bit "icky". I loved that. What parts of your soul did you trade for the power you have? How much of your soul is yours? Are you still essentially "good", or did you gleefully jettison morality the moment the first taste of power was promised?

Doing bargains with questionable entities for knowledge, insight and power. Perhaps you've cleverly outsmarted all the forces of Oblivion you've dealt with, tricking them out of power and wealth while keeping your mind largely intact, but its still a very dangerous path to walk, and the cocky notoriously fall to insanity and worse. Magic in TES is NOT Disney white-light shining fairy mothers. Its dark, its icky and its risky. You can be a good mage, but the road is fraught.

Even in the later games, I think they've held onto this. Morrowind, certainly. But even the use of soul gems or certain alchemical ingredients is kinda questionable.

Perhaps we could have dailies for the Mages Guild that tapped into this kind of Daedric corruption sort of thing more. We now have assets for multiple realms of oblivion that could be utilised for certain tasks. In Skyrim's conjuration master training quest, we summon a powerful Dremora and bend its will to force it to go (off-screen) to Dagon's realm and steal a sigil stone. But the benefit of having ALL OF TAMRIEL and HALF THE PLAINS OF OBLIVION means we can go further. Why go off-screen to imply some epic story when we could be sent to the Deadlands ourselves to scale a sigil tower and steal a stone for our masters in the Mages Guild ourselves? And Bonus Points(tm) for X harvesting Spiddal Sticks and Razor Grass on our way through.

Or what about going to stealing a vial of Chaotic Creatia from the Aureal or Seducer Fonts of Rebirth in the Shivering Isles? I don't even want to think about what our client is planning to do with it, but the pay is good, and the Guild Rep is priceless!
What about travelling to the Soul Cairn bargain with the Ideal Masters, or to convert regular Soul Gems to their Black counterparts?

Perhaps in all these ideas there could be, like there is in the TG Heists, a specific risk of failure. Bargaining with powerful Daedric entities should have some sort of risk or trade-off, and this could be a hook for making this gameplay particularly unique. The degree to which this is manifest could be played around with: maybe as minimal as the lesser reward you get in TG for only partial completion.

Or even closer to home, the base game shows us there's always some silly mage out in the wilderness trying to summon daedra beyond their power to control (I love these, btw!); I think we should be sent specifically to stop Bob the Initiate who is at Known Location from summoning Daedra, but with the power of deciding how we should handle it! Do we return him or her to the Mages Guild to answer for their crimes, let them go, or do we feed them to the Daedra? For a twist, perhaps there is an option to subvert the Initiate's work- a desperate Daedra may wish to make a new deal with an obviously more worthy supplicant: us! for their freedom, and we can either do the right thing and banish them, or take the deal, free the daedra and lie to the guild for our reward.

Another idea that could be cool is based on the observation that throughout the modern games, there has been a veritable slew of really cool and interesting alchemy ingredients. Maybe there's more than our alch crafting system in ESO can handle, but surely the Mages Guild could make a use of a lot of them, even if we can't. Put Snowberries and Giant's Toes back in Skyrim, Clouded Funnel Caps and those Orange Polypores back in Cyrodiil, and Gold Kanet and Hyper Facia back in Morrowind, keep them ONLY in those locations and let us collect a bounty for them from Mage Guild alchemists. Now I have a reason to go to this or that place, specifically. Honestly I loved them all, and how not seeing those little red berries literally everywhere in the snowy parts of W. Skyrim, or Green Stain Shelf Caps from Blackwood made me feel like sth was missing. I love harvesting, and would love a new reason to keep doing it. New Guild passives could help us in finding or identifying them, or help us fetch a better price for them. And then reintroduce VOID SALTS which were in all 3 modern games, and are just really cool, and have them as rare drops much sought after by Guild alchemists and enchanterers.

I'm happy with the style of the current MG daily "premises"(?) btw. I love Sheogorath, and think that the theme of insanity associated with that kind of dark, Lovecraftian dangers of delving and losing one's mind thing works really well with the Mages Guild. I hope they keep it, and even continue to iterate on it, going forward (sans the CHEEEEEESE!!). For this reason also the Hermaeus Mora teasings in ZOS' teaser letter is intriguing to me, and since it also taps into the same feel, would love to see the MG lean into that, also.

As for the Fighters Guild, have them merge with the Undaunted. The latter must have lost some prestige after the blunders they've made in the basegame dungeons and some trials. And the Fighters Guild are twiddling their thumbs after the Planemeld; they realise they're stepping on each other's (conceptual?) toes and decide on a merger. Dungeon quests should absolutely be the domain of the Fighters Guild, and because I don't see Mighty Modra or Kailstig going anywhere, best to clump together. That way Dungeon gameplay gets its own associated guild, like TG and DB do, and potentially MG could do. And while there'd obviously be some gameplay logistic obstacles, I don't think that they'd be insurmountable, or that there haven't been changes in the past with greater scope.

Amottica

fizzylu wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

The_Titan_Tim wrote: »

Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood desperately need an active skill line,

They do not desperately need an active skill line. They serve the purposes they are intended to serve very well and thematically fit well with their respective DLC stories. We have no desperate need for more skills as we have a ton. That is not to say Zenimax should not add more skills but it needs to be where it makes sense.

I've been wanting them to add active skills to those lines for years so agree to disagree and it does make sense for them to have them too.

Wanting them to vs desperately needed is not the same. It is not a need nor are we desperate for them.